SPYM’s $100B Milestone Might Be the Last of Its Kind

A hundred billion is the new hundred million.

State Street’s SPYM fund surpassed $100 billion in assets last week, making it the fastest to grow from $50 billion to $100 billion, taking just 283 trading days, according to State Street. The ETF is the latest entrant to the core S&P 500 cast and represents the firm’s efforts to access growing retail markets via low fees; SPYM’s is just two basis points. But it may be the last core S&P 500 product breakthrough for a while because of all the funds already tracking the index — and their sheer size. This means advisors shouldn’t expect any new core S&P 500 funds anytime soon, experts said.

“It’s more likely that other kinds of broad equity ETFs will be launched in the future as opposed to [trying to] do battle with $100 billion ETFs that are out there,” said Loren Fox, director of research at Fuse Research Network. “At this point, it’s hard to see a lot of space in the market for another S&P 500 ETF that is just tracking the straight beta.”

4’s a Crowd

SPYM, which formerly operated under the ticker SPLG, is one of the four primary S&P 500 ETF offerings, said Aniket Ullal, head of ETF Research & Analytics at CFRA Research. The others include the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV), the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO) and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY). But they cater to different segments of the market: While SPY has traditionally been a fund for institutions, such as asset managers and hedge funds, IVV has honed in on advised retail and VOO on self-directed retail investors. Because of State Street’s institutional focus, added Ullal, the company didn’t really have a product that prioritized the retail segment. “SPYM basically is their way of accessing retail money, by going with a lower-cost product and competing more directly with VOO and IVV,” he said.

Inflows and outflows among the rest of the four were varied. In Q3 2025:

• VOO brought in $6.6 billion in net inflows and is up 17.7% YTD.
• IVV added $3.6 billion in assets and is up 14.7% YTD.
• SPY, however, bled $1.7 billion and is up 15.6% YTD.

S Tier. The ETF industry as a whole, Ullal said, can also be broken down into three main price segments: the passively managed, low-cost beta tier; the mid-priced segment, which has more active management; and high-priced funds of roughly 75 basis points and above, including things like derivatives and buffer products.

“The newer entrants, like Capital Group, JPMorgan [and] Goldman Sachs, they’re focused more on active management, derivatives and those kinds of products,” Ullal said. But the low-cost segment, he added, is dominated by the likes of Vanguard, State Street and BlackRock — something he doesn’t see changing: “It’s hard to see anybody coming and disrupting these three big players.”